Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Ben Koan's avatar

Interesting take on territorialism, but your analysis of the Charedi position is missing an important point. Eastern European countries owe their current democracy and security in large part due to ethnic cleansing that resulted in relative homogeneity. Recall that, in addition to the destruction of European Jewry, millions of Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II.

You are correct that “The Jewish community in Hungary is the most safe and secure in Europe.” However, if Charedim would en masse immigrate to Hungary today, would it remain so safe and secure? Eastern Europe can accommodate tiny Jewish minorities, but the interwar period showed that it had no place for large, economically and politically dynamic Jewish populations of the kind we see in Israel and America.

Expand full comment
Danny Kaye's avatar

Interesting take, but I find it fundamentally unconvincing. By the time the gates of Palestine had slammed shut in 1939, many of those who understood that the European soil was starting to burn under their feet, had found a way to go there. I know that from personal testimonies in the family. The majority, by the time they understood, were trapped. So I doubt that the availability of a territory in an actual godforsaken location would have changed much. The Charedim are fundamentally conservative and passive. They would have maintained their illusion that "this too will pass" until it was too late no matter what.

On the other hand, it is doubtful that a movement to settle in Uganda (or in Alaska, with Michael Chabon in the role of Herzl https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16703.The_Yiddish_Policemen_s_Union) could have mustered the Jewish nationalistic energies that were unleashed by the return to Zion. And finally, in such an alternative reality, it is doubtful that the local populations - be they Bantu, Inuit or gauchos - would have accepted thriving Jewish Yishuv in their midst anymore than the Palestinian Arabs accepted it.

So, yeah, the Holocaust did in fact vindicate Zionism.

Expand full comment
20 more comments...

No posts